


Stray Feathers

by Menzosarres



Series: Glass and Iron [3]
Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 03:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1763745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menzosarres/pseuds/Menzosarres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Aurora proves Maleficent wrong about something.</p>
<p>Summary: This is the third Glass and Iron Short, after Glass and Iron and Breathing Sunlight. At this point, I recommend reading the other two for background, but technically all you need to know is that three (almost four, now) years have passed since the end of the movie. </p>
<p>Originally posted on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray Feathers

 “Why can’t humans fly?” Aurora mused aloud, staring up at the clouds from where her head rested in Maleficent’s lap.

After their last shared journey over the Moors, Aurora had asked if Maleficent could turn her into a bird so she could learn to fly beside her. Maleficent had shaken her head and replied, “Humans cannot fly.” The words had haunted Aurora all through the night and now, in the sunlight once again, she decided to try for a more thorough answer.

“You used to change Diaval back and forth all the time… why not me?”

Maleficent let the ball of golden light she had been idly playing with drop over Aurora’s chest. As the magic disappeared into her skin, Aurora giggled, delighting in the rush of ticklish energy that raced through her every time she felt Maleficent’s stray magic. She wasn’t sure why Maleficent did it, let her magic fade away into her body rather than the air around them, but she wasn’t going to complain. It was a delightful sensation.

Hands free, Maleficent began idly braiding a lock of her hair as she answered the young queen’s question. “Humans are impossibly closed-minded,” she began. “No matter how much magic I pour into them, they refuse to turn into anything else, they can’t change.” She finished the braid and drew Aurora’s hand up to hold the end while she started another on the other side. “Animals like Diaval have no sense of self-image, nothing beyond being healthy and able to create babies. Humans place so much of what they value into how they look that they are unable to accept a transformation.” She took back the braid Aurora had been holding and tied them off together with a bit of magically strengthened vine. “There are many things faerie magic cannot perform on humans. Curses are the easiest, because of how willing humans are to believe in and accept the darker side of magic. Blessings, on the other hand, can do only so much. They lose power quickly with time.”

Aurora listened intently through Maleficent’s explanation. The faerie guardian was often sparing with words, but she was always willing to answer Aurora’s questions, and Aurora never wanted to take the incredible learning opportunity for granted. “So because we can’t accept being anything but the way we are, we can’t change?” she asked, wanting to be sure she understood.

Maleficent nodded. “In essence, yes. Faerie magic is powerful, but the two things it can do little against are iron and the human mind.”

Aurora was quiet for a while, musing over what Maleficent had said. “What if… does it matter that I was raised by faeries? Well, faeries and Diaval… Or that I’ve been around magic all my life?”

Maleficent looked thoughtful. “Doubtful. Though…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

“What?” Aurora asked, sitting up as her curiosity was piqued.

“You are remarkably receptive to my magic.” Though her words were light, Aurora thought she detected a faint nervousness in her expression.

“How so?” Aurora gently prompted.

As she watched, Maleficent allowed those delicate amber sparks to form about her fingertips before trailing them gently down the side of Aurora’s face. She shivered, feeling her lips part reflexively in a slow intake of breath at the tantalizing heat triggered by both the magic, and Maleficent’s touch. When the still faintly glimmering fingers reached her bottom lip, Aurora couldn’t help letting her eyes fall closed, stunned by how much more intense this felt than the usual faint sensation of magic dispersing along the skin of her throat and neck. She wanted more of it.

When she tried to take one finger into her mouth, Maleficent drew back, hastily starting an explanation. “This is the essence of my magic. Shapeless. Most humans would not even notice its presence in this form, not until I used it for something. You seem perfectly aware of it, though, and your skin accepts it willingly. I… I didn’t want to tell you why I’ve been filling you with magic because… I have no guarantee it will work.”

Feeling almost drunk on how much magic Maleficent had shared with her this afternoon, Aurora found she couldn’t care less why Maleficent was doing it. “I won’t be cross with you… if you do it again.”

Maleficent chuckled, clearly amused with Aurora’s reaction to her power. “Very well, but only a little bit. I’ve never given you this much in one day and I’m not sure your human subjects would be very understanding if I return you to them faerie-struck and glowing.”

“Glowing?” Aurora murmured, entranced by the miniature light show taking place between Maleficent’s fingertips.

“You didn’t notice?” the faerie asked.

Aurora shook her head.

“Give me your hand.”

She obeyed, though mildly disappointed that she wouldn’t be given another opportunity to try and taste the glittering light that felt so delicious on her skin. Still, when Maleficent took her hand into the swirl of gold dancing about between her palms, she couldn’t help sighing in contentment. “It feels as though you’re… feeding happiness and… hunger… right into my hand.”

Her eyes fell closed once more when Maleficent’s thumb stroked gently across the pulse at her wrist, sending a jolt of something pure and heady racing through her veins and settling around her heart as softly as a silken curtain. It wasn’t until well after Maleficent had relinquished her hand that she managed to find the daylight again.

“See?” the faerie murmured, tilting her head down and drawing Aurora’s attention. Sure enough, it looked as though some small creature had lit a flame just beneath the surface of her skin, a shifting wave of light that glimmered along the length of each finger before spidering out through her palm and pooling in a golden glow at her wrist.

Fascinated, Aurora turned her hand this way and that before her eyes, staring in silent wonder until she managed a smile and a whispered, “That’s beautiful.”

Maleficent’s answering sigh was heavy, piercing the giddy bubble her magic had created. “Yes, it is, but… I can’t help wonder if it’s working.”

“Working?” Aurora asked as the light began to fade.

“I… You’re human, Aurora. I don’t want… I won’t be able to bear it when…” She paused, stretching out her wings in a reflexive motion of anxiety which Aurora had long since realized was the faerie’s version of pacing. “You age so  _quickly_.”

Finally gaining a glimmer of understanding, Aurora shook her head. “Oh Maleficent, it’s far too soon to worry about me growing old. I’ll not be twenty until another three weeks have passed and you’re already imagining me timeworn and grey?”  

“No, little Beastie.” She captured a stray lock of Aurora’s hair between her fingers. “I think you will be beautifully regal when you start showing silver.” She let her hand fall back into her lap. “No, I worry that one day you will die, and it will inevitably be too soon. If I can… feed you on the magic that makes our lives pass so slowly in these realms… if I can convince my power to treat you as another part of me… maybe you can be queen forever.”

Aurora knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that faeries could only be killed by physical means, as they had no natural end to their lifetimes, but never had Maleficent spoken of her relative immortality in so many words. “I don’t think I should like to be queen forever…” she mused aloud. Waving off Maleficent’s attempt at voicing protest, she added, “But I wouldn’t mind having forever with you.”

Any time she could bring that raw, honest smile to Maleficent’s face, Aurora counted it a personal victory, and its beauty struck her anew each and every time.

“Then you don’t mind me… experimenting with this, with my magic?”

Aurora grinned and shook her head. “Hardly.” She scooted closer, leaning her head on Maleficent’s shoulder. “Even if it does nothing at all to keep me young, do you really think I’d want you to stop? I’ve never felt anything so incredible in my life!”

Maleficent shook her head. “Someday, you’re going to have to come back to the Moors less drained by all those petty human problems so I can show you something even more incredible,” she said, voice husky and dark with her change in intentions.

Aurora grinned, pressing her lips against Maleficent’s neck. “Remind me again why we’re waiting?”

Maleficent pushed aside Aurora’s wandering lips when the found a particularly sensitive bit of shoulder near the top of her wing. “We won’t be if you keep that up,” she muttered.

“I like that idea,” Aurora said with a wicked smile, leaning in for a quick kiss.

Maleficent shook her head. “You know we can’t; not yet.”

Aurora sighed, drawing back. “I know. And I’m so sorry. I only wish I could stay away longer.”

She always returned from the human kingdom exhausted, the months there a seemingly endless struggle to assert her authority and chip away at decades of misrule. Maleficent claimed it took her a full month in the Moors to return to a real state of emotional stability, and another month to feel herself again. Aurora was inclined to agree. In her first two years as queen, she had refused to spend any less than three months in the Moors at a time, yet ever since Maleficent had first visited her in the human kingdom, the people there had eaten up more and more of her time, leaving her desperate for these short weeks in the ever-peaceful faerie realms.

And Maleficent was right. She always was. No matter how often Maleficent’s lips haunted her dreams and her easy, perfect kisses left her ready to shed her skin in desperation, she needed more than desperation to spark their first time together, and until she spent her full two months recovering the light and the laughter she found so rarely in the land of iron, she would wait. She wanted to be with the faerie she had fallen so easily in love with fully, not as the shell of herself that ruled that other world, and the fact that she still had never spoken of love out loud said she wasn’t ready.

Determined to take her mind off of things she couldn’t have, Aurora carefully returned to their original conversation. “Well then. If, like you said, I do take so well to your magic, do you think I might take to another form as well?”

Maleficent smiled at the abrupt retreat from their last words but didn’t hesitate to answer. “I would never have thought so before, but… perhaps you may be the human to prove me wrong.”

“Will you try? Please?” Aurora asked, giddy at the prospect of wings of her own, even if they had to be attached to the body of an animal.

“Very well.”

A quick blaze of golden light flashed in Aurora’s eyes, but when the spots in her vision cleared, she was disappointed to find her body still fully human.

A strangled sound drew her attention back to Maleficent, and after a brief moment of fear at the apparently stricken expression on her protector’s face, it was quickly replaced by confusion as the dark faerie began to laugh.

When she finally calmed enough to answer Aurora’s repeated demands of,  _“What! What is it?”_  Maleficent muttered, “Well then. It’s more than I thought would happen, anyway.” She chuckled again. “Go dash down to the stream and take a look.”

Aurora obeyed, confused and irritated and still distinctly wingless. Upon catching a glimpse of her face in the water, however, she nearly fell in. Where once Maleficent’s quick braids had crowned her hair, now a delicate crop of golden feathers grew from her scalp, creating the illusion of a downy feathered hood.

Rushing back to where the faerie sat, still chuckling to herself, Aurora glowered good-humoredly down at her. “Please tell me you can fix it!”

A wave of her hand brought Aurora’s familiar golden locks into prominent display about her shoulders once again, and with the guarantee of having her usual appearance back, she finally allowed her own laughter to surface. “Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I do look rather fetching in feathers, wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite,” Maleficent replied wryly. “That being said… this may be something we can work on. No matter how many pranks I used to play on wandering castle guards, I never managed to make one of them sprout so much as a rat’s tail. Those feathers might someday become wings of your own.”

Aurora’s grin widened. “Do you really think so?”

“Mmhmm,” Maleficent hummed, drawing Aurora down beside her once again. “I think that anyone open minded enough to kiss a creature with horns must be open minded enough to turn into a creature herself.”

Tucking herself close by Maleficent’s side, Aurora chuckled. “That may be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Shoulders shaking with silent laughter, Maleficent replied, “I do hate you sometimes, Beastie.”

Aurora answered with a kiss. 


End file.
